ASKING EFFECTIVE QUESTIONS:

In this video, I'm going to share an interesting data analytics case study, it will illustrate how
problem-solving relates to each phase of the data analysis process and shed some light on
how these phases work in the real world. It's about a small business that used data to solve a
unique problem it was facing. The business is called Anywhere Gaming Repair. It's a service
provider that comes to you to fix your broken video game systems or accessories. The owner
wanted to expand his business. He knew advertising is a proven way to get more customers,
but he wasn't sure where to start. There are all kinds of different advertising strategies,
including print, billboards, TV commercials, public transportation, podcasts, and radio. One
of the key things to think about when choosing an advertising method is your target audience,
in other words, the specific people you're trying to reach. For example, if a medical
equipment manufacturer wanted to reach doctors, placing an ad in a health magazine would
be a smart choice. Or if a catering company wanted to find new cooks, it might advertise
using a poster at a bus stop near a cooking school. Both of these are great ways to get your ad
seen by your target audience.

The second thing to think about is your budget and how much the different advertising
methods will cost. For instance, a TV ad is likely to be more expensive than a radio ad. A
large billboard will probably cost more than a small poster on the back of a city bus. The
business owner asked a data analyst, Maria, to make a recommendation. She started with the
first step in the data analysis process, Ask. Maria began by defining the problem that needed
to be solved. To do this, she first had to zoom out and look at the whole situation in context.
That way she could be sure that she was focusing on the real problem and not just its
symptoms. This leads us to another important part of the problem-solving process,
collaborating with stakeholders and understanding their needs. For Anywhere Gaming
Repair, stakeholders included the owner, the vice president of communications, and the
director of marketing and finance.

Working together, Maria and the stakeholders agreed on the problem, not knowing their
target audience's preferred type of advertising. Next step was the prepare phase, where Maria
collected data for the upcoming analysis process. But first, she needed to better understand
the company's target audience, people with video game systems. After that, Maria collected
data on the different advertising methods. This way, she would be able to determine which
was the most popular one with the company's target audience. Then she moved on to the
process step. Here Maria cleaned the data to eliminate any errors or inaccuracies that could
get in the way of the result. As we've learned, when you clean data, you transform it into a
more useful format, create more complete information and remove outliers. Then it was time
to analyze. In this step, Maria wanted to find out two things.

First, who's most likely to own a video gaming system? Second, where are these people most
likely to see an advertisement? Maria, first discovered that people between the ages of 18 and
34 are most likely to make video game related purchases. She could confirm that Anywhere
Gaming Repair's target audience was people 18-34 years old. This was who they should be
trying to reach. With this in mind, Maria then learned that both TV commercials and podcasts
are very popular with people in the target audience. Because Maria knew Anywhere Gaming
Repair had a limited budget and understanding the high cost of TV commercials, her
recommendation was to advertise in podcasts because they are more cost-effective. Now that
she had her analysis, it was time for Maria to share her recommendation so the company
could make a data-driven decision.

She summarized her results using clear and compelling visuals of the analysis. This helped
her stakeholders understand the solution to the original problem. Finally, Anywhere Gaming
Repair took action, they worked with a local podcast production agency to create a 30-second
ad about their services. The ad ran on the podcast for a month, and it worked. They saw an
increase in customers after just the first week. By the end of week 4, they had 85 new
customers. There you go. Effective problem-solving using data analysis phases in action.
Now, you've seen how the six phases of data analysis can be applied to problem-solving and
how you can use that to solve real-world problems.

From issue to action: The six data analysis phases

There are six data analysis phases that will help you make seamless decisions: ask, prepare,
process, analyze, share, and act. Keep in mind, these are different from the data life cycle,
which describes the changes data goes through over its lifetime. Let’s walk through the steps
to see how they can help you solve problems you might face on the job.
Step 1: Ask

It’s impossible to solve a problem if you don’t know what it is. These are some things to
consider:

• Define the problem you’re trying to solve

• Make sure you fully understand the stakeholder’s expectations
• Focus on the actual problem and avoid any distractions
• Collaborate with stakeholders and keep an open line of communication
• Take a step back and see the whole situation in context
Questions to ask yourself in this step:
1. What are my stakeholders saying their problems are?
2. Now that I’ve identified the issues, how can I help the stakeholders resolve their
questions?

Step 2: Prepare

You will decide what data you need to collect in order to answer your questions and how to
organize it so that it is useful. You might use your business task to decide:

• What metrics to measure

• Locate data in your database
• Create security measures to protect that data

Questions to ask yourself in this step:

1. What do I need to figure out how to solve this problem?
2. What research do I need to do?
Step 3: Process

Clean data is the best data and you will need to clean up your data to get rid of any possible
errors, inaccuracies, or inconsistencies. This might mean:

• Using spreadsheet functions to find incorrectly entered data

• Using SQL functions to check for extra spaces
• Removing repeated entries
• Checking as much as possible for bias in the data

Questions to ask yourself in this step:

1. What data errors or inaccuracies might get in my way of getting the best possible
answer to the problem I am trying to solve?
2. How can I clean my data so the information I have is more consistent?

Step 4: Analyze

You will want to think analytically about your data. At this stage, you might sort and format
your data to make it easier to:

• Perform calculations
• Combine data from multiple sources
• Create tables with your results

Questions to ask yourself in this step:

1. What story is my data telling me?
2. How will my data help me solve this problem?
3. Who needs my company’s product or service? What type of person is most likely to
use it?
Step 5: Share

Everyone shares their results differently so be sure to summarize your results with clear and
enticing visuals of your analysis using data via tools like graphs or dashboards. This is your
chance to show the stakeholders you have solved their problem and how you got there.
Sharing will certainly help your team:

• Make better decisions

• Make more informed decisions
• Lead to stronger outcomes
• Successfully communicate your findings

Questions to ask yourself in this step:

1. How can I make what I present to the stakeholders engaging and easy to understand?
2. What would help me understand this if I were the listener?

Step 6: Act

Now it’s time to act on your data. You will take everything you have learned from your data
analysis and put it to use. This could mean providing your stakeholders with
recommendations based on your findings so they can make data-driven decisions.

Questions to ask yourself in this step:

1. How can I use the feedback I received during the share phase (step 5) to actually meet
the stakeholder’s needs and expectations?
These six steps can help you to break the data analysis process into smaller, manageable
parts, which is called structured thinking. This process involves four basic activities:

1. Recognizing the current problem or situation

2. Organizing available information
 3. Revealing gaps and opportunities
4. Identifying your options
When you are starting out in your career as a data analyst, it is normal to feel pulled in a few
different directions with your role and expectations. Following processes like the ones
outlined here and using structured thinking skills can help get you back on track, fill in
any gaps and let you know exactly what you need.

SIX TYPES OF PROBLEMS:

These include: making predictions, categorizing things, spotting something unusual,

identifying themes, discovering connections, and finding patterns. Let's define each of these
now.

First, making predictions. This problem type involves using data to make an informed
decision about how things may be in the future. For example, a hospital system might use a
remote patient monitoring to predict health events for chronically ill patients. The patients
would take their health vitals at home every day, and that information combined with data
about their age, risk factors, and other important details could enable the hospital's algorithm
to predict future health problems and even reduce future hospitalizations.

The next problem type is categorizing things. This means assigning information to different
groups or clusters based on common features. An example of this problem type is a
manufacturer that reviews data on shop floor employee performance. An analyst may create a
group for employees who are most and least effective at engineering. A group for employees
who are most and least effective at repair and maintenance, most and least effective at
assembly, and many more groups or clusters.

Next, we have spotting something unusual. In this problem type, data analysts identify data
that is different from the norm. An instance of spotting something unusual in the real world is
a school system that has a sudden increase in the number of students registered, maybe as big
as a 30 percent jump in the number of students. A data analyst might look into this upswing
and discover that several new apartment complexes had been built in the school district
earlier that year. They could use this analysis to make sure the school has enough resources to
handle the additional students.

Identifying themes is the next problem type. Identifying themes takes categorization as a step
further by grouping information into broader concepts. Going back to our manufacturer that
has just reviewed data on the shop floor employees. First, these people are grouped by types
and tasks. But now a data analyst could take those categories and group them into the broader
concept of low productivity and high productivity. This would make it possible for the
business to see who is most and least productive, in order to reward top performers and
provide additional support to those workers who need more training.

Now, the problem type of discovering connections enables data analysts to find similar
challenges faced by different entities, and then combine data and insights to address them.
Here's what I mean; say a scooter company is experiencing an issue with the wheels it gets
from its wheel supplier. That company would have to stop production until it could get safe,
quality wheels back in stock. But meanwhile, the wheel companies encountering the problem
with the rubber it uses to make wheels, turns out its rubber supplier could not find the right
materials either. If all of these entities could talk about the problems they're facing and share
data openly, they would find a lot of similar challenges and better yet, be able to collaborate
to find a solution.

The final problem type is finding patterns. Data analysts use data to find patterns by using
historical data to understand what happened in the past and is therefore likely to happen
again. Ecommerce companies use data to find patterns all the time. Data analysts look at
transaction data to understand customer buying habits at certain points in time throughout the
year. They may find that customers buy more canned goods right before a hurricane, or they
purchase fewer cold-weather accessories like hats and gloves during warmer months. The
ecommerce companies can use these insights to make sure they stock the right amount of
products at these key times.

Six problem types

Data analytics is so much more than just plugging information into a platform to find
insights. It is about solving problems. To get to the root of these problems and find practical
solutions, there are lots of opportunities for creative thinking. No matter the problem, the first
and most important step is understanding it. From there, it is good to take a problem-solver
approach to your analysis to help you decide what information needs to be included, how you
can transform the data, and how the data will be used.

Data analysts typically work with six problem types

1. Making predictions 2. Categorizing things 3. Spotting something unusual 4. Identifying
themes 5. Discovering connections 6. Finding patterns
A video, Common problem types, introduced the six problem types with an example for each.
The examples are summarized below for review.

Making predictions
A company that wants to know the best advertising method to bring in new customers is an
example of a problem requiring analysts to make predictions. Analysts with data on location,
type of media, and number of new customers acquired as a result of past ads can't guarantee
future results, but they can help predict the best placement of advertising to reach the target
audience.

Categorizing things
An example of a problem requiring analysts to categorize things is a company's goal to
improve customer satisfaction. Analysts might classify customer service calls based on
certain keywords or scores. This could help identify top-performing customer service
representatives or help correlate certain actions taken with higher customer satisfaction
scores.

Spotting something unusual

A company that sells smartwatches that help people monitor their health would be interested
in designing their software to spot something unusual. Analysts who have analyzed
aggregated health data can help product developers determine the right algorithms to spot and
set off alarms when certain data doesn't trend normally.

Identifying themes
User experience (UX) designers might rely on analysts to analyze user interaction data.
Similar to problems that require analysts to categorize things, usability improvement projects
might require analysts to identify themes to help prioritize the right product features for
improvement. Themes are most often used to help researchers explore certain aspects of data.
In a user study, user beliefs, practices, and needs are examples of themes.

By now you might be wondering if there is a difference between categorizing things and
identifying themes. The best way to think about it is: categorizing things involves assigning
items to categories; identifying themes takes those categories a step further by grouping them
into broader themes.

Discovering connections
A third-party logistics company working with another company to get shipments delivered to
customers on time is a problem requiring analysts to discover connections. By analyzing the
wait times at shipping hubs, analysts can determine the appropriate schedule changes to
increase the number of on-time deliveries.

Finding patterns
Minimizing downtime caused by machine failure is an example of a problem requiring
analysts to find patterns in data. For example, by analyzing maintenance data, they might
discover that most failures happen if regular maintenance is delayed by more than a 15-day
window.

Key takeaway

As you move through this program, you will develop a sharper eye for problems and you will
practice thinking through the problem types when you begin your analysis. This method of
problem-solving will help you figure out solutions that meet the needs of all stakeholders.